A Year In Hades - A True Marching Band Story
by Kanoi
Summary: CHAPTER 4 UP!!!! Melanie makes a trombone player cry, plus some tension between me and her. r/r PLEASE! if you sign in, i'll r/r your stuff if i know anything about it.
1. We begin. . .

A/N - okay folks, here's the start of the evil drum major fic I've been promising – I've had horrible writer's block, but I figured if I post what I've got, then maybe people would harass me for more and I would snap out of it. It's a bit lengthy at the beginning with the character descriptions, I know, but bear with me here, folks! And I think something's wrong with my computer – I typed this on AppleWorks and then pasted it into MSWord to post, and the formatting is all screwy – the spaces look way too small. So if they really appear that way, please let me know so I can try to fix it. Thanks guys! Enjoy!  
  
  
  
  
  
A Year From Hell - based on a true story.  
  
*names have been changed to protect the guilty*  
  
background info on characters, etc.:  
  
Melanie is the queen bitch who goes on total power trips. She's a junior, was not student staff the year before, and is DM number two. Her best friend is Liz, the senior DM from last year who trained her and was just as bitchy. She plays oboe/clarinet and fits the snooty stereotype of an oboeist (when I say stereotype I mean it - I have a friend at another school who plays oboe and is very nice. Melanie isn't.)  
  
Jake is DM number three. He's a junior and was sort-of student staff last year. His ex-girlfriend is Liz, who convinced him to try out for DM and was on the judging panel. But she graduated. He's very easy- going, his family inheritance is a major beer company and he has definitely earned the nickname Johnny Pot-smoker, but during marching season he's been good about that. He tries his hardest to do well, but more often than not (if you know him at all well) his attitude is more than a little discouraging. He marched tenor sax last year and played bari sax in concert band.  
  
Sara is DM number one. She is a senior and the absolute sweetest girl you will ever meet. Her mom works at the school and her brother, Carl, is a junior who is one of the drumline section leaders. Very humble and honest. It takes a LOT to piss off Sara. She plays flute and piccolo.  
  
Chris is senior and the other drumline section leader. He, if anyone, deserved to be a drum major this year with Sara. He's dedicated, has an awesome attitude, truly cares about the good of the band and is a great musician.  
  
Flute section leaders are Elly and Rebecca. Elly is a senior, Rebecca a sophomore. First year as section leader for both of them. Elly is very agreeable and amiable. Rebecca is an incredibly talented leader who is always busy with ten different activities at the same time, so becoming a drum major would require prioritization of her activities. She has occasional mood swings.  
  
Clarinet section leader is Alison. She is a senior and a total band nerd. She is not always in the loop and often finds out about band gossip after it is over.  
  
Trumpet section leader is Ben. He is an incredibly talented junior and the best player in the region. However, due to other commitments, he is not actually in the class and his friend Jon takes over during in-class rehearsals.  
  
Low Brass section leader is yours truly, the narrator. For convenience, we'll call me Kanoi. I'm a sophomore this year, so it's obviously my first year as leadership. I'm pretty close to Sara and have been by her side through everything that's happened to her this year. And believe me, a lot has happened to her this year! And just think, it's not even concert season yet. I play baritone, but for auditions I have to say I play euphonium. So sad, really. Baritones don't get enough recognition in this world.  
  
The director we'll call Mr. P. It's his second year with the group, so I've been with him for all of my marching career. His daughter is two years old and shares my real name. He has not yet grasped which has to come first for three months out of the year - family or band. Melanie has him wrapped around her little scrawny pinky.  
  
Other characters will be introduced as needed. These are the essentials for now.  
  
  
  
The second day of leadership camp, a Tuesday, one of the Assistant Drum Majors pulled aside the Head Drum major. "I need to talk to you," she said. "Alone."  
  
"Well, Jake is a drum major too, we're all drum majors together, and he can't be here for freshman camp, so can he stay?" asked the ever-polite head drum major, Sara.  
  
"No, he can't. I need to talk you alone." Melanie closed the door to the staff room. "Here's the deal, Sara. I feel that you are looking down on people a lot, and just totally putting yourself above everyone else on this staff. I'm afraid the same thing is going to happen once the freshmen and returning members get here. I think this is really horrible and needs to stop if we want to have a good year. Oh, and by the way, Jake feels the same way."  
  
Shocked, Sara went home that day and called up Jake. He promised he had no idea what she was talking about and that he had never said these things to Melanie. And this was just the beginning.  
  
Freshman Band Camp. The thing that student leadership looks to with fear and joy. These still-really-eighth-graders are just lumps of clay with instruments in their hands. They are ours to mold. If we fuck this up, it'll follow us for the rest of the season.  
  
The first thing Mr. P does is have the freshmen sit down on chairs in the riser-like band room. The staff (that's us) lines up against the chalkboard in the front of the room. We're all wearing our band shirts - the ones we have on now are a combo of our show shirts for the year and a staff shirt - different color scheme than the show shirt, and with the word STAFF really big across the back. Our band is big on different shirts.  
  
We get in a line and say our names, year, and what section we are in charge of.  
  
"Alison, senior, clarinets."  
  
"Elly, senior, flutes."  
  
"Rebecca, sophomore, flutes."  
  
"Ben, junior, trumpets."  
  
"Jon, junior, trumpets."  
  
"Chris, senior, battery. I play snare." I smile at this. Chris always hated the pit, and did everything possible to distance himself from them. "That's the marching drums, freshmen."  
  
"Carl, junior, drums. I'm on snare, too."  
  
"Kanoi, sophomore, low brass. That includes baritones, trombones, tubas, french horns, bari saxes, and tenor saxes. For marching season. For concert, axe the saxes." I swear, I have the most work after the drum majors. "And I play baritone." I restrain myself from adding, And very well. But it's true. More of that later.  
  
Now it was the drum majors' turn. Jake, true to form, wasn't at freshman camp, and wouldn't be back until regular band camp. So Melanie had to start. "Hi guys, I'm Melanie, I'm a junior, and I'm one of your drum majors. I marched clarinet and I play oboe."  
  
Sara was last. She had on her white drum major polo (the band's polos are red), which was tucked into her blue jeans. She had what would become her trademark belt on - red and glitter-y. Her thick dark hair was up in a ponytail fastened with a red ribbon. I'm pretty sure she had her usual light dusting of glitter around her eyes. (But it wasn't red. That was MY trademark for the marching season.) Sara was the epitome of school spirit, of band spirit. Unlike Melanie, who only wore her white drum major polo under her uniform. She never wore a band shirt on Fridays like she was supposed to. She never wore her band shirt, come to think of it. Except for in the stands at competitions. But back to Sara.  
  
"Hi guys, my name's Sara, and I'm another drum major. I'm a senior, and I play piccolo and flute. And for those of you who don't know, the drum major is the person who conducts you guys when you play and is in charge of the band after Mr. Peterson."  
  
The next thing Mr. P did was call attendance and have us pass out name tags when he called names. Me, being sort of boy-crazy, started looking for any cute freshmen. Hey, I'm only a sophomore! And there were a couple - a clarinet named Doug and a percussionist (and soon to be cymbal slut) named Jeff. 


	2. Spit in the Circle

A/N okay folks, here's the deal: sharing is caring. It's not that hard to r/r the rest of my stuff. Back on the page where you clicked to get to this story, it has my name. Click on that. Then you'll find a list of what I've written. Click on one of those (see how easy I'm making this for you? It's because I want you to do it!), read it, and then click the little box at the bottom of the page that says review. If you sign in, I'll read your stuff, too. Okay? Okay. Now r/r this please!  
  
  
  
Band camp, to my knowledge, was the one time that Melanie behaved herself. I personally got off to a rough start as a leader. I had as freshmen two trombones and one baritone – I had sent the tenor and bari over to the saxophones to learn parade rest and horns up with their instruments, since, quite frankly, I had no clue how to hold a saxophone. While the flute section leaders were having tons of trouble remembering all of their freshmen's names, I could count mine on one hand. My freshmen behaved fine – on of the trombones had a bit of trouble figuring out haces, partially due to the huge shoes he was wearing. The trouble began when the returning members came the next week. One of the trombone players, whom we'll call Iguana (for his obscenely long middle toes), was going to try out for section leader last year, but decided that he didn't have the commitment it would take. I was a bit mad at him for this – low brass is a fairly large section and was notoriously the most difficult in our band to deal with – but decided to let it go.  
  
The first thing we did in sections at band camp was get together and talk a bit, just a little thing about ourselves, so that everybody knew everybody. We circled up on the 40 and I started.  
  
"Hi guys, I'm Kanoi, I'm the section leader, I play baritone and I'm a sophomore."  
  
"Iguana, trombone, sophomore. Disco Inferno!" He had wanted to do a Disco Inferno show ever since he started marching band.  
  
"Mikey, trombone, junior." Mikey had marched alto sax last year but switched, thank god, because we needed her.  
  
"Jonny, trombone, junior." Jonny I had a problem with. He had a crappy attitude and was a total pothead. He had called last year's section leader a bitch to her face on the field, and while I am not bothered by this kind of stuff, she had burst out into tears. That was the one time I was proud of him, because the previous section leader actually was a bitch. He had little to no respect for authority and had a less-than-half assed attitude about band itself. He was constantly complaining about it, and when we asked him why he didn't just quit, he said because then he couldn't goof off with friends. Trying to tell him that band is not for goofing off is hopeless. Hopefully Jonny wouldn't be a problem this year.  
  
Kirk and Becca were the new sophomore trombones, both of them knew Iguana from their middle school.  
  
The new freshman baritone was a girl named Nikki.  
  
"Steve, but everyone calls me Stoner. Sophomore, tenor sax."  
  
"I'm Fred. I like Circle K and I play tenor." Fred looks like a monkey. I don't mean to be mean here, but he actually does look like a monkey. And he wears this red baseball cap with a torn Circle K patch on it.  
  
"My name's Sam. I play bari sax. And I'm a frosh."  
  
"Luke, tuba, sophomore." Luke was a lot like Johnny, but actually did as I asked on occasion. They were alike in the druggy sense.  
  
"I'm Edward. I'm Kanoi's demon spawn sex monkey."  
  
"Ed! Dude, let's not scare the froshes quite yet, okay?!"  
  
"Sorry, Kanoi."  
  
"That's okay. Tell them what you play." I wasn't concerned about clearing the record about me and Edward because I knew that the rest of the section would soon figure out his sexual orientation didn't quite mold with mine. Or rather, it did. A bit too well. We both liked the dick.  
  
"Well, I'm a sophomore, and, duh, I play tuba." He gestured to the huge piece of metal wrapped around his shoulders.  
  
"Great! Okay, guys, one of the low brass traditions is the spit circle, so get in close." We all squeezed together in a somewhat circular shape. "Now, on the count of three, we all spit in the middle, okay? One, two, three."  
  
I'm still convinced that more spit landed on shoes than in the middle of the circle.  
  
  
  
  
  
Coming up next chapter: The Whooping Stick and Sectionals with Melanie. 


	3. All Hail the Whooping Stick

A/N  
  
As has been pointed out in several of my other stories, low brass players have a tendency to, oh, forget things. And, as we all know (or should know, if you've read the rest of my stuff. If you haven't, shame on you! Go read it), I'm the model low brass player, except for the drugs thing. God-damned pothead baritone players who ruin it for the rest of us. Anyway, I was reading chapter two after it was posted and just about kicked myself. I forgot the one pothead baritone player who ruined it all for us. So he'll appear in this chapter, along with an explanation of his nickname. I also forgot to mention what year Fred is. If you're exceptionally smart, you could have figured out that he's a freshman. Chances are, I forgot something else, too. So you'll be getting more of these footnotes in the author's notes. Thanks to Holley, Mae-Lynn Moodle, flutistoutofstep, bouncyflute101, and ellipsis for reviewing this story so far! I love you almost as much as my concert horn! Something that I put in a review of my own story (I dunno how many of you go back and read the reviews after you've written them) : yeah, i know, i'm a dweeb, reviewing my own story, but something didn't upload to the summary and i don't feel like switching to netscape just to change it, so here it is: HUGE bonus points if you can guess where the title for chapter one came from! yeah, that's about it. oh, also, this story i'll try to focus on evil drum major, but it might just turn into anecdotes that i remember with probably a lot of them involving melanie's bitchiness. And now, on with the story!  
  
A Year In Hell – A True Marching Band Story.  
  
Chapter Three – All Hail The Whooping Stick  
  
  
  
  
  
Band camp music sectionals. The times where Mr. P says, "Kanoi! Take your section and teach them the entire show! That includes all those nasty triplet runs with the octave jumps in fast 12/8! And those funky rhythms in Part Three! And be back in half an hour!" Today, low brass got stuck rehearsing in the outside hallway by the band room – the one that connects the band, choir, orchestra, and guitar rooms and their wing to the rest of the school. It's an open-air hallway with cement rafters ten feet above the floor and the hall's about five feet wide. The acoustics sucked, and low brass was bitching at me as if it were my fault we were the only section to get stuck outside practicing in the humid 105 degree Arizona heat. But I had a distraction planned.  
  
As soon as everyone was settled in a very crooked semi circle around me, I pulled from my pocket a single wooden drumstick and two sharpies. Returning members grinned, knowing damn well what this was all about.  
  
"This, my froshie friends, will be what we low brass folk like to call the Whooping Stick," I said. "Props to Fish for supplying the stick, even if he did steal it."  
  
"Hey! None of that, you bitch." Fish was the third baritone player, a blond sophomore with a habit for marijuana, among other things, but mostly it was the green. He had a mellow nature about him (yeah, and I wonder where that came from), and coming from him, "bitch" was like "buddy," so I took no offense. His unusual name had come from last years' baritones – Faye, Steven, and Eric, all sophomores then. None of them had returned this year, Faye so she could get a job, which would lead to a car, which would lead to eternal happiness; Eric for varsity football; Steven – well, no one's really sure why Steven didn't come back. They had re-named Fish from his real name, Christian, first to Cartoon, because his features were freakishly reminiscent of a cartoon character, and then it was narrowed down to Fish when it was decided he was a cartoon fish. He's called Fish so much it was put on his low brass shirt. Even Mr. P calls him Fish. More on Fish later – he'll be a recurring character in the life of low brass.  
  
"Yeah, whatever Fish. Anyway, the Whooping Stick is a THMS low brass tradition. Some baritone players started it a few years ago. What we do is we all sign it and write a little something – and I mean little – the stick's only so big. Then, we take it out to marching rehearsal tomorrow and throw it into the fifty and hash. Low brass has the god-given right to whack people with it, but only if Mr. P's not watching. If you wish to whack fellow low brass with it, you must first ask me. So while I'm working with a certain section, the rest of you sign it."  
  
"Cool!" said Kirk in his usual non-chalant way.  
  
"My name's Sam!"  
  
"Good, Sam. Write it on the stick while I work with the trombones."  
  
"We're gonna work on Disco Inferno, right?"  
  
"No, Ig, we're not."  
  
I looked up after I heard a snicker. Shit. "Luke! Get down OFF the rafters! You're gonna break your fucking neck!"  
  
"Naw I'm not, Kanoi. Jeez, take a chill pill."  
  
"Down. Now!" I put on my sternest section leader face and pointed to the ground.  
  
"Okay, okay." He jumped down and landed with a loud thump. The vibrations and the fact that he put out a hand on a nearby chair to steady him knocked a trombone that was leaning on the chair over. Luckily, Mikey caught it just in time.  
  
I groaned inwardly. This sucked. The entire section was in hysterics and I put my hands up, about to start clapping and call them to attention, when Melanie walked through the door from the band room into the hall.  
  
  
  
A/N I know, I know, I promised the stuff about Melanie and sectionals this chapter, but I'm about too fall asleep in my computer chair and I wanna get something up before the weekend, so here it is! More soon, I promise. 


	4. Sectionals with Melanie

A/N how smart are you? If you're really smart, you'll have noticed that while I was listing people in my section, I didn't list any mellophones. This isn't because I've forgotten them, no, it's because WE DON'T HAVE ANY MELLIES!!!!!!! That's right, not a-one. But I've heard rumors that we're getting like four or five next year. But the school only owns three mellies. This could be problematic. Anyhoo, thanks to Monkeybird15, Holley, Mae-Lynn Moodle, flutistoutofstep, bouncyflute101, and ellipsis for being wonderful reviewing-type people. Keep up the good work! And the rest of you that I know are reading this - you don't have to LIKE something to review it!!!! So review it please! Sharing is caring - you r/r mine I'll r/r yours, providing it's something I know about.  
  
A Year In Hell - A True Marching Band Story  
  
Chapter Four - Sectionals with Melanie  
  
When I saw Melanie, I sighed. "Hi, Melanie," I said, not wanting her to come in and take over my section.  
  
She looked around the hallway and a look of disdain came over her face. Looking around, I could sort of see why. Ig was pounding Kirk with the whooping stick, Mikey was, now that it was safe from chair-falling dangers, endangering the life of her trombone again (which was really MY trombone) by seeing how far she could quickly extend the slide without it flying off and catapulting down the hall, the low saxes were making the most obnoxious noises possible on their horns, Fish was looking at the clouds through the gaps in the cement rafters and commenting to Luke that these were great stoned clouds, and Nikki was examining the newest dent in her crappy student model rental euph (she had yet to receive a marcher). Really, it was a sad looking bunch. I knew that they were awesome and had huge amounts of potential, but Melanie believed otherwise. She started clapping her hands together.  
  
"Band - Ten Hut!" She screeched in her shrill voice. When she called commands, she had a habit of her voice cracking. It was really very amusing.  
  
My section jerked into attention perhaps a beat late, unprepared for the command. Mikey's slide went flying as she snapped her instrument down - she hadn't had time to lock the slide before going to attention. I groaned inwardly. The responding verbals of "Go!" were forgotten and replaced with snickers. I was exempt from such commands, and after letting them compose themselves, I called them to parade rest.  
  
"Red!" This time, they remembered the verbals.  
I turned to Melanie. "What's up?"  
  
She gave me one of her looks, the how-pitiful-the-sophomore-section-leader-can't-control-her-section one. "Mr. P wants me to work on Part One with you guys. He wants me to conduct it so you can learn it too."  
  
I glowered on the inside. I was the only low brass who knew the hard lick in Part One - the lick that had the triplet runs and octave jumps in fast 12/8. But I smiled and put on my happy face. "Sounds great, Melanie. Thanks."  
  
"No problem. Okay, guys, let's start the bar before A, so we can get the accelerando worked in."  
  
The one bar before A contained a whole note. Kinda hard to speed up on a whole note, if you ask me. But no one did. Once we got to A it was my time to shine. I played the lick nearly perfectly - the only thing I did wrong was not separate my triplets enough. I knew that later this would be a problem, because on the field they needed to be more separated so they were heard as triplets, but for now it was pretty damn good. The only person who came close to matching me was Sam - the only noticeable mistake he made was holding the first dotted quarter too long. I was impressed - upon first meeting him, Sam had seemed a bit slow, and I had doubted his musical ability. Little did I know that Sam would become the only truly dependable foundation of the section.  
  
As we played through the lick for the second time, I watched the rest of my section. Mikey was having a lot of trouble playing the triplets - she was new to the instrument and had only been playing for a few weeks. The trombone part involved two sets of consecutive triplets - one with two beats on an F, then a high D, the other with two notes on a G and then the high D - first position to first, a lip slur, then fourth to first. It wasn't that Mikey was having trouble finding the positions, it was that by the time she found them we were on the next bar already. I watched her bell angle go to the side as she leaned her head - one of the signs that she was getting frustrated. She seemed to think that if she squeezed the slide between her neck and her shoulder it would make her play better. Her brow was furrowed as her arm moved frantically.  
  
Finally Melanie cut us off. "Okay, we're just going to work on the triplets - let's play triplets over and over again on a concert F, okay?" She counted off briskly. It went okay - once most of the section heard what they were supposed to play sounded like, they could play it. Melanie stopped us again. "Let's add the next note - Sam, you go down with the tubas, and everyone else goes up." We looped the triplet part, repeating it over and over. This is something that can be very helpful in learning music - repetition - but it doesn't help much when you're listening to the wrong thing over and over again. Melanie finally figured out that we weren't playing it right after I put my horn down and started clapping the correct rhythm. She stopped us and gave me a mild glare.  
  
"Well, obviously, that wasn't the right rhythm. Let's take a fifteen minute break - when we come back we'll have a playing test on those two bars." I loved how she made it seem like it was her idea to have them play it wrong - NOT!  
  
During that fifteen minute break, Mikey hung out with her boyfriend, a guy from a different school that was hanging out during band camp. I didn't have a huge issue with this - as long as he let me do my job and they weren't constantly slobbering like Melanie and her boyfriend were. Melanie's boyfriend joined band as a member of the pit just to be with her.  
  
I did fine on the playing test, of course. Most of the section did. But when it was Mikey's turn, she just couldn't quite get it. Melanie relented and gave her an easier version - just playing the two sets of triplets and not the whole lick. Mikey couldn't do that, either. Melanie, surprisingly, could see that it wasn't working and had the whole section play that part, especially listening to Mikey. I was watching Mikey too. Melanie was starting to get frustrated. She had just the saxes play, then me and Nikki and Fish. When it came time for the trombones to play, Mikey was having more and more trouble with it. I grimaced as I saw tears start to well in her eyes. I walked over behind the trombones and pulled her out of the group. I shot a look at Melanie over my shoulder as I led Mikey down the hall towards the music building lobby. This was one of the few nice looks I've ever given Melanie - one of the let-me-deal-with-this-but-keep-it-up-you're-doing-great looks. Her  
boyfriend followed us.  
  
We pushed through the double doors that led to the closed-off lobby (actually, pulled is more accurate - the handle is missing on the one that works and you have to shove your finger in the crack and pry it open) and I sat Mikey down on the stairs that led to the main building.  
  
"Mikey, what's wrong?"  
  
She sniffled. "I can't play it! Everyone else is out there playing it fucking perfectly, and I can't even play triplets on this thing!" she cried, nudging the trombone towards the door.  
  
I gave her boyfriend a troubled look. He moved in closer and put an arm around her shoulder.  
  
"Mikey," I started, "How long have you been playing the trombone?"  
  
She looked at me. Her eyeliner was streaked halfway down her cheeks. She wiped at it. "About a month."  
  
"Well, I think you're doing pretty damn good for only playing this thing for a month, and especially for being new to brass instruments."  
"Yeah," said the nameless boyfriend. "When I first started playing drums it took me forever to get past half notes on the bass and quarters on the snare at the same time,"  
"How long did it take you, Kanoi? When was the first time you played triplets?"  
I frowned. "I don't remember, Mikey. But that doesn't matter - you're still doing really well!"  
  
We sat there for a minute while Mikey finished crying. "But you're a better player than me, Kanoi! You're fucking good!"  
I shook my head in shock. "Dude, Mikey, I'm NOT that good. And even if I were, there's always gonna be someone that's better than you. ALWAYS. Because there's not an Olympics for band, or anything. There's no way of knowing if you're the best. You can be the best to your abilities, but someone will always be better than you."  
The boyfriend nodded. "She's right, Mike."  
"I guess."  
  
I waited a minute and sat there nibbling on my lip. "You wanna work on it with me during lunch? I mean, I need to work on it too; the only reason I know it is because we were practicing the entire show during leadership camp and after the freshmen left on Thursday and Friday. I still have trouble getting from the low D to the high D."  
"Okay." I think she actually smiled at me.  
  
"C'mon, we'll get some nice cold water in the air-conditioned main and head back. Sectionals are almost over anyway."  
We climbed the half-flight of stairs to the main and opened the doors. Then we had to go down two half-flights (I realize this makes one full flight, but in the middle of the two is ground level. Whoever designed our main building was smoking crack [and not sharing, might I add. But I don't do that.]) to the basement near where the uniforms are kept. The coldest water fountain in the school is in the little theater lobby, so that's where we headed. As Mikey was drinking her boyfriend (still nameless, by the way) shot me a grateful look. They hadn't been going out that long and I could tell he wasn't quite ready to deal with that kind of problem. I just smiled and rolled my eyes. Because they hadn't been going out long, he had no idea how much of a drama queen Mikey was. Little did he know that this was nothing compared to what she usually complains about.  
  
A/N eep, I just read this and I'm not totally satisfied with how it turned out, but I wanna get something up. This is the part where I could really use grammatical (well, not grammatical, but I can't think of a better word) hints, or ways to make this chapter work better. Somehow, I guess, writing about Melanie isn't my favorite subject. . . .Ooh! I was talking to our director today and for next year he's leaning towards west side story. Not sure if I wanna march or conduct that one. . . 


End file.
